Susan Kelly

Here are some excerpts from an interview I did with Maxine Kumin. It was first published in The Country and Abroad in the September, 1999 issue.

Kelly: Someone who wrote about you--and I'm putting this in quotes--said that you "insist upon order," that this is important to you.

Kumin: It's personally important to me as a poet.  Read More 

This interview with Robert B. Parker was first published in 1998 in The Country and Abroad. Here's an excerpt:

Kelly: What was the genesis of Spencer?

Parker: I read Raymond Chandler and copied him.

Kelly: There must have been more to it than that.

Parker: I always wanted to do this [write crime novels] and  Read More 

Here's an excerpt from an interview I did with Mary McGarry Morris. It was first published in 1999 in The Country and Abroad.

Kelly: Did you want to be a writer when you were very young?

Morris: I did. I did. It was one of those things I always knew I wanted to do, wanted  Read More 

This is an excerpt of a long interview I did with poet Simon Ortiz, first published in The Country and Abroad, September, 2000.

Kelly: Your first book of poetry was "Naked in the Wind," wasn't it?

Ortiz: Oh my gosh, that's going back a few years. How did you know about that? It was a  Read More 

Susan Kelly: A moment ago you spoke of Enid Blyton. Are those children's mystery stories the reason you include a mystery element in so many of your novels [THE LOCK, THE KEY, and THE DOOR IN THE WALL]?

Benita Kane Jaro: I hadn't thought of that! They must be. I still love mysteries, and  Read More 

Here's an interview with Benita Kane Jaro, whose most recent novel, BETRAY THE NIGHT, deals with one of history's (and literature's) enduring mysteries: why, in 8 A.D., the emperor Augustus exiled the poet Ovid. Ovid knew the reason, but would never reveal it. In Jaro's novel, Ovid's wife Pinaria becomes of necessity the detective.  Read More 

Here is part of an interview I did with Robert Pinsky when he was Poet Laureate of the United States. It was published in the November 1999 issue of The Writer.

Susan Kelly: When did you begin writing?

Robert Pinsky: That's a hard question for me to answer because I write so much poetry in  Read More 

This is an excerpt from an interview I did with author Elinor Lipman. It first appeared in the September, 1999 issue of The Writer.

Susan Kelly: You started as a short story writer and abandoned that form for the novel. Was there any special reason for that?

Elinor Lipman: For me, short stories were developmental.  Read More 

In 1998, I did an interview with Dominick Dunne, which was published that same year in The Country and Abroad. Following is an excerpt:

Kelly: What was your strangest experience as a reporter? I know you've had a lot of them.

Dunne: A lot. I really had a lot of them.

Kelly: What stands out  Read More